What Most Schools Don't Teach

A video about computer coding.  There are some great lines in the video... "Whether you're trying to make a lot of money or whether you just want to change the world..."

Also great for a look at the Google Office... I'd love a school environment like that....

We should probably get coding....

http://www.codecademy.com/afterschoolhttp://www.codecademy.com/afterschool

30 Ways to promote classroom creativity

30 Ways to promote creativity in your classroom from Innovation Excellence blog

http://www.innovationexcellence.com/

 

Lego Art

An Art sculpture unit... using Lego as the medium?
That would certainly allow children to bring their own creativity to sculpture, and would enable them to create something real and tangible, and unique.

Artist and sculptor Nathan Sawaya works exclusively in Lego.

A trip to Legoland as part of the learning experience might be nice, too...

http://brickartist.com/

The Big Write

I like those ideas that really bring an area of learning to the attention of the whole school and community.  Large scale projects can transform children's preceptions... of scale, of ambition, of options and opportunities (see The Big Draw - a previous blog post).

I like the idea of covering the school Hall, the floors, the walls in text.... perhaps part of a week-long writing project.  Something that immerses children in text, in writing, and in reading - as there would be real intrigue in following stories, reading what others have been writing about, etc.

Our schools are great buildings for displaying really grand, large-scale projects.

Do we make enough of them for this purpose?

Do our works and our displays have the impact with our children that they could have?

What If?

When OK isn't good enough.

What If....

Opens a whole world of possibilities, doesn't it...

Enabling Enterprise

Enabling Enterprise was built by our team of teachers on two principles:  Firstly, that children need to be great communicators, socially adept and resilient to succeed. Secondly, that learning can be the most exciting thing in the world.
Enabling Enterprise achieves both by bringing enterprise into the classroom through innovative programmes of engaging projects and exciting challenge days.


http://enablingenterprise.org/primary

Range of opportunities

Creativity also implies a range of opportunities for children.  Robin Hood has had its own TV Crew for many years - Robin Hood TV.  The job of the Robin Hood TV crew has been to regularly report on things going on around the school.  The TV crew has provided a communications medium... with children and with parents... and has enabled successive groups of children to learn a whole range of skills and techniques associated with film making and reportage.

This short film was submitted as an entry to the first Leeds Golden Owls Film festival in March 2012.  The film reached the final shortlist of three for the award.

Typically, films made by the Robin Hood TV film crew are shared with parents and the community at the Friday Celebration Assembly and are also displayed on a dedicated 'TV Station' that plays films made in the school on a continuous loop.  Children often stop to watch the films.  It is exciting for them that they are the starts and the subjects of the films that are displayed.  This often provides positive reinforcement for the children in terms of their perceptions of themselves as effective and high-achieving learners.  being 'on television', of course, brings a feeling of kudos and authority.  Children are able to adopt the Mantle of the Expert.

The Big Draw

Creativity sometimes requires thinking big, thinking outside of the box.  This three minute film captures all six hours of The Big Draw at Robin Hood Primary School, Leeds, in October 2011. 

We decided to give the whole day over to drawing, right throughout the school.  The centrepiece of the day was the plan to cover the entire School Hall in drawings.
Children were involved in Artistic endeavours in their own classes throughout the day.  There was Manga-style cartoon drawing and self-portraits, there were large collaborative works, paintings... We hired a graffiti artist to work with a group of older children on an outdoor project... and we covered the School Hall in drawings.
At the end of the day, we invited our community to view our school and our Hall as an Art Installation.  We actually sold artworks from around school... including squares cut from our Hall display.
The film begins with the Assembly at the start of the school day.  Throughout the day, each class visited and spent around 45 minutes 'drawing the Hall'.

The video camera was left static in one corner of the Hall recording the day.  An area of wall can be seen where a digital projector was projecting an image.  There were, in fact, three digital projector images displayed around the space for children to engage with, if they chose.  The idea of having those available for children to work into came out of a prior project called Active Learning Drawing... the outcomes from which were distributed to schools nationally.
Verbal communication, negotiation... and deep artistic thinking... is prompted when children collaborate on artistic projects and when they are invited to re-interpret the works of other artists.

An enterprise curriculum

Art & Design offers pupils a real chance to explore creativity, enterprise and entrepreneurialism.  It is important that pupils are helped to understand that design is everywhere... someone has come up with the idea, someone has made everything that they see around them. 

Putting pupils at the middle of the design and make process allows them to use their imagination to create something totally unique.  It also helps enable ideas to flower and the seeds of future opportunities to be planted. 

Design shops can be a great source of inspiration.

People will always need cushions (!)

Spot The Difference...
Cushions created by Year 5 and Year 6 pupils.

What might be cushions one year might be bags another and might be soft toys yet another.  The school is an ideal place to mobilise the community... to create a marketplace to sell the goods.  Those goods created by children could be just one stall... or several stalls... amongst a whole host of stalls selling different things, perhaps as part of a Makers Market.

Soft toys

Bags

and enterprise can be ethical, too...

Recycling
http://bigbooklittlebookcardboardbox.co.uk/index.htm

A recycling and enterprise curriculum.
There is a world of possibilities out there for us...

Home Learning

We have explored 'Home Learning' projects as an alternative to Homework.  Changing the title changes the emphasis.  I like the fact that we promote to children and families that learning takes place everywhere, all of the time and that families can have foci to learn and play together.

Many of our Home Learning projects have been very successful with high levels of pupil engagement and buy in.  The most successful projects involve the whole family.  They are open-ended.  They can be developed over a series of weeks.

These Year 2 children created circuits as part of their Home Learning on electricity.  They then taught the rest of the class about what they'd done, how they'd done it and how the circuit worked.  This changed the nature of the relationship between the teacher and the taught.  It empowered the children and led to a deepened learning for all... that came from curiosity, rather than their passive reception of an imposed curriculum.  It changed the teacher's role and enabled much more scientific thought and theorising.

Why would we choose not to teach in this way?

Home Learning topics mirror the topics that make up the curriculum.  Home Learning runs alongside, and in some cases ahead of, the topics themselves.  Pupils may, for instance, be asked during a school holiday to find out all they can about the Vikings, or the Second World War, or their family, or research a subject that they want to continue to study in school during that Half Term.

The topic in school then begins with a sharing of the things that the children have found out.  This is usually includes a great deal of factual content.   The fruits of the children's research is mapped onto large sheets of paper that are displayed in the classroom.  The pupils-as-researchers, then, have created the factual skeleton for the topic.  The teacher has not had to 'teach' the facts (by which I mean take the didactic knowledge transmission approach).  This enables topics to focus on skills development, and on exciting hooks into the learning, eg; a Second World War topic that begins with pupils walking into a blacked-out classroom.  As soon as they enter, the Air Raid siren sounds and the teacher shouts at the children to take cover under the desks.  The teacher, then, begins teaching in a whisper with everyone huddled beneath the desks. 
Why are we here?
What's going on outside?
How much danger are we in?
What would happen if we turned on the lights?
The topic thus takes on a real and meaningful life for the children.  They are able to empathise, understand, respond.  Surely children learn more, learn better, learn deeper if they have an emotional hook into the topic that is being taught.

Radical Thinking

"Britain's 50 New Radicals" set me thinking.  Practical radlicalism, charities, social enterprises, divergent thinking and community credits...  There needs to be more joined-up thinking, more joined-up working, more often if we are to truly address the challenges that face us in education and in society in the twenty first century. 


Britain's New Radicals celebration event from Nesta UK on Vimeo.


http://www.nesta.org.uk/news_and_features/britains_new_radicals

Creativity is about us taking responsibility for our curriculum...

Imagine a multi-disciplinary, topic-based curriculum in which children learn in an immersive environment that is tailored to a specific theme, eg;

Year 1 learn about Robots in their Robots Topic.  They come in on the first day after the Half Term to a classroom that is full of robots of all shapes and sizes.  They play with them, photograph them, draw them.  During the course of the Topic, they learn about electricity, including how to  wire circuits that make robots move and make their eyes glow.  They learn how to build robots from Lego, K’Nex and from junk boxes.  They create animations of their robot’s adventures using Stop-Frame Animation.  The films that they make are shared with the world via Youtube.  The children watch their own and their friends animated adventures at home.  They write stories about their robots and dramatise them.  They learn robot dances.  They learn how to programme robots, how to calculate like robots and they collaborate together to create huge robots that live in the classroom with them for the duration of the topic.

Year 2 have a Pirates Topic for the Half Term.  When children come into the classroom on the first day the classroom is dressed with Jolly Rogers and treasure chests.  Every child is given an eye-patch and immediately makes a skull and crossbones T-Shirt that they wear as their uniform every day of the Topic.  They have Pirate names.  They count their gold in Numeracy, recount their pirate adventures in Literacy, read about other pirates in their reading time and explore maps in their hunt for treasure.  They go to the seaside to smell the sea, to look at boats and ships and to plot their adventures on the High Seas.

Meanwhile, Year 6 pupils study London.  The Topic involves a two day, one night, stay in London, which is paid for from the curriculum budget.  Pupils set off early in the morning on the school minibuses, bought through the economies of scale that a multi-school model enables.  They arrive on the outskirts of the city and then take the tube into the centre.  They visit the museums, galleries and landmarks that they have studied in class.  They take photographs and videos on their IPads and blog about their experiences later on in the evening.  For many children this is their first visit to London and their first experience away from home.  On Day 2 they visit Tate Modern.  They have a packed lunch by Millennium Bridge and debate the relative merits of modern versus traditional art.  The trip is repeated four times over the course of two weeks with pupils from each of the partner schools.  Some of the staff accompany two trips to act as guides and experts.  Pupils from all of the schools meet together after the trips to talk about their experiences.  Some groups collaborate on a follow-up project via Skype video conferencing.

The Curriculum of Me

Building an entire Topic around each individual child is an interesting idea to play with. 

Art: 
lots of opportunities here - self-portraiture, full length portraiture, paintings/drawings of favourite things, belongings, pets, treasured objects

Geography: 
My Map... local area, places of interest, places visited.  This could be interactive.  It could be geo-tagged.  It could include photographs, audio files.
My World... places I've been on holiday, or places that relatives come from, places I'd like to visit (and why), places of interest, places in the news.... places to find out about, research about...

Literacy:
Diaries, biography, recounts (recollections, memories), interviews, play scripts... dramatise key moments in your life.

Numeracy:
databases, draw around yourself... calculate your...

ICT:
make a video diary, make a film, spreadsheets of facts about you, databases

Science:
The Human Body, food diary, speed/fitness tests, fitness tests repeated over time... if I practice as something, can I measure my improvement?

PE:
Personal Bests, Personal Best Efforts, databases, spreadsheets

History:
Personal histories, family histories... Who Do You Think You Are? histories

PHSCE:
Health and well being, emotional well being

Creativity through self-directed learning

This is a suggestion made by Daniel H.Pink in his book 'Drive - The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us'
"Set aside an entire school day and ask kids to come up with a problem to solve or a project to tackle.  In advance, help them collect the tools, information, and supplies they might need.  The let them have at it.  The next morning, ask them to deliver - by reporting back to the class...on their discoveries and experiences."

The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it's in the arts, sciences, or business.
Teresa Amabile
Professor, Harvard University

Routine work can be outsourced or automated; artistic, empathetic, non-routine work generally cannot.
Daniel H. Pink

Insights + Ideas + Impact = Innovation

New ideas come from differences.  They come from having different perspectives and juxtaposing different theories.
Nicholas Negroponte

Mysterious World

I'm delighted that we're developing a new unit of work in Year 3/4 entitled Mysterious World.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigfoot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness_Monster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_flying_object


Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, UFO's, the Nazca Lines and much more.... we're going to explore the mysterious and unexplained phenomena that have puzzled people for many years.
We will have lots of writing opportunities: adventure, narrative, reportage.
We'll have lots of opportunities to talk, debate, argue and challenge.
We'll have lots of opportunities to test hypotheses... to research the stories.
We'll have opportunities to create our own hoaxes, films, photographs.
We'll have opportunities to make things and test the Science behind whether we can make them float, or fly.
We'll have a whale of a time doing it...


The teaching staff made this video as a stimulus for the children on their return to school after the Half Term to begin the topic.  Big Foot was a talking point for many weeks afterwards.  the children's engagement in their learning was incredibly high and excellent outcomes were achieved.

Schools work hard to develop creative and stimulating curricula.  We all aspire to memorable and interesting topics that capture children's imagination and help them to 'live' the experience... thus deepening their connection with the learning.  That is by no means an easy thing.  It requires a significant investment of time, energy, imagination and effort.  It requires the same of teachers as we hope to achieve for children through doing these kinds of things.  It requires creativity, imagination, 'flow'... that wonderful state of becoming lost in your work, of time having little meaning, of being immersed in an activity that you enjoy doing.
I have to share my thanks with the colleagues who were involved in the making of this film.  They are a very talented and dedicated group of people.

Space Junk

"Space is so littered with debris that a collision between satellites could set off an 'uncontrolled chain reaction' capable of destroying the communications network on Earth."

To create an exciting and engaging, and relevant, curriculum... we have to link it to the world that our children live in.  We have to present them with real problems and challenges that excite them and allow them not only to learn in school but to learn about themselves and their world beyond the confines of the school day, term or year.

Consider Space Junk...
Space Junk article 
Space Junk Wikipedia page
Asking our children to respond to this challenge as part of an 'Our Place in Space' Topic could get very interesting... 
We would want to know about the planets
We would want to know about space
We'd want to know about rockets and satellites and space missions and scientific breakthroughs and the acts of heroism and folly that have made them possible
We would need to know about gravity and orbits and the atmosphere 
We would need to know about the Earth's and the other planet's relationship with the Sun
We would need to know about the future prospects for our planet


We would need to know how these communications systems work
We'd need to know a little bit about what they do
We would need to know what would be affected were they to stop


We'd need to begin to imagine a different kind of Earth
We'd need to think about the prospects for people, their lives, their jobs and their prospects if many of our technologies and communications systems ceased to exist
We would need to consider the long term implications for the planet


We would need to do some research
We may need to contact some experts in the field
We would need to begin thinking about solutions to the problem of Space Junk
We'd need to do drawings
We'd need to make presentations
We'd need to share our thoughts with one another and be open to the challenges that would be put forward, based on scientific reasoning
We might share some of our ideas with the experts
We would certainly raise awareness of the issues through diagrams, films, booklets and posters
We may be the ones who inspire a child to make this their life's work and we may be the ones that inspired that child to solve the problem and make a lasting difference to the world.
 

 

The Tinkering Curriculum

This one is a cross-over from my Leadership blog.
http://leadingschool.blogspot.com/2012/02/fifty-dangerous-things-you-should-let.html
The Tinkering School  http://www.tinkeringschool.com/
and Brightworks  http://sfbrightworks.org/

There are some great curriculum ideas here.  And what a great idea for a Summer School, or an alternative curriculum that addresses those children who struggle to deal with the mainstream curriculum. 

http://ww3.tvo.org/article/power-tools-can-help-kids-love-learning-expert-says

Life Doesn't Frighten Me

Using books as a stimulus for creative expression:  What about this video as a starter piece...

Creative Spaces 18

I like this as furniture for a common area... Not only does it look nice, it has multiple different arrangements and, thus, functions.

sfbrightworks

"Innovation is a discipline and it is capable of being learned and practised."

Where do we get our inspirations from? 2

Our schools have a lot to learn from modern museum designers and planners.  There are many inspirations that we can draw for our environments from the interactive elements of the museums.
http://www.techniquest.org/start/
techniquest on Youtube

Where do we get our inspirations from? 1

Following blogs like this one from Coulsdon College is a good way of drawing inspirations that can be translated into your own curriculum...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/coulsdoncollege/

Curriculum

Our curriculum should be exciting and engaging.  We should be building a curriculum from the bottom, up... a curriculum that is informed by and responds to children's interests, enthusiasms and passions. 

http://education.lego.com/default.aspx?domainredir=www.legoeducation.com

Opportunities for incidental learning

We have added magnetic letters and numbers to all of the radiators throughout school.  It is having an interesting effect.  Some of our younger children are children are choosing to cluster around the radiators at lunchtime (not because it's cold) and make words/ number problems.  They are challenging each other to make bigger words and solve bigger number problems.  Similar is happening in the classrooms when the younger children are given independent learning time.

Creative Spaces 17

Inspired by Idea Paint, Claire decided to cover the tables in the classroom with lining paper.  The children are able to doodle on the paper, check calculations, spellings, get the 'flow' on their handwriting going before committing it to their books, try spellings to see what 'looks right'.  It is a  really powerful additional tool for both the teacher and the pupil.  Claire has actually taken to marking some of the jottings on the paper.  She can add her own rough drawings, etc that help enable learning by providing a quick visual representation of a concept or a problem for children to address independently.  We are leaving the paper on the tables for several days in order that the children have an immediate reference back to earlier phases of the learning journey.

We, of course, see desk jotters that many adults with desk jobs use.  This enhancement to the classroom achieves the same function.  A great additional support for learning.

 Simple ideas are sometimes the very best ones.

"The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive, and discoverers."
Jean Piaget

By 2014, according to estimates, the US will add another 10 million creative sector jobs to the nation's economy.  The same pattern holds for virtually all of the advanced nations, where the creative class makes up 35% to 45% of the workforce, depending on the country.

"Logic will get you from A to B.  Imagination will take you everywhere."
Albert Einstein

TEDx

Pupil/student creativity:  organise a TEDx and see it for yourself.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDxYouth/featured

Creative Spaces 16

Magnetic wallpaper that can be coated with a drywipe vinyl... whiteboards on any surface.
http://www.a1magnetics.co.uk/wallpaper.html

http://www.thethirdteacher.com/imagine/

The Third Teacher

http://www.thethirdteacher.com/

With thanks to my new teacher, James Clarke
http://www.classroom-design.co.uk/

Creative Spaces 15

Winston Churchill's words from the Creative Spaces 10 post, below:
“We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” 
                                                                Winston Churchill 

Just beautiful use of colour and space here.
We cannot help but be uplifted by design like this and by spaces like these.

http://www.architizer.com/en_us/projects/view/little-england-nursery-and-pre-school/20354/

Outside the box

We are out of the box here.  This is a radical vision for a school.  There aren't that many pupils around.  I wonder whether that's how it can be made to work... very low pupil:adult ratios.

http://www.vittra.se/V%C3%A5raskolor/StockholmSyd/Telefonplan.aspx

My thanks to James Clarke

Education Consultant to Spaceoasis

e james@classroom-design.co.uk

w www.spaceoasis.co.uk

m +44 (0)7793 159 645

PE

Snug play presents lots of interesting and exciting ways in which to develop a PE unit of work.  I particularly like the opportunities for collaboration, creativity and exploration.  Children are able to work together to design/create a course, explore different ways of moving around and try different arrangements of the equipment.  Great for traversing.  Just great for fun and engagement...
http://www.snugplay.co.uk/


I quite like the idea of a school owning a full set of bikes, too.  Learning to ride a bike could be one of a series of learning guarantees in PE... like learning to swim, playing in a school team, etc...

Immersive Learning 2

I'm very taken by the Ministry of Stories idea...

Imagine a multi-disciplinary, topic-based curriculum in which children learn in an immersive environment that is tailored to a specific theme, eg;

Year 1 learn about Robots in their Robots Topic.  They come in on the first day after the Half Term to a classroom that is full of robots of all shapes and sizes.  They play with them, photograph them, draw them.  During the course of the Topic, they learn about electricity, including how to wire circuits that make robots move and make their eyes glow.  They learn how to build robots from Lego, K’Nex and from junk boxes.  They create animations of their robot’s adventures using Stop-Frame Animation.  The films that they make are shared with the world via Youtube.  The children watch their own and their friends animated adventures at home.  They write stories about their robots and dramatise them.  They learn robot dances.  They learn how to programme robots, how to calculate like robots and they collaborate together to create huge robots that live in the classroom with them for the duration of the topic.

Year 2 have a Pirates Topic for the Half Term.  When children come into the classroom on the first day the classroom is dressed with Jolly Rogers and treasure chests.  Every child is given an eye-patch and immediately makes a skull and crossbones T-Shirt that they wear as their uniform every day of the Topic.  They have Pirate names.  They count their gold in Numeracy, recount their pirate adventures in Literacy, read about other pirates in their reading time and explore maps in their hunt for treasure.  They go to the seaside to smell the sea, to look at boats and ships and to plot their adventures on the High Seas.

The next time I'm in London I plan to take a trip to the Ministry of Stories.

Creative Spaces 14 - Immersive Learning 1

Following on from the Ministry of Stories blog entry below (Creative Spaces 11 http://wilsonm011.blogspot.com/2012/01/creative-spaces-11.html)... what about immersive learning environments in which classrooms are dressed for Topics to create a thoroughly immersive experience... eg; a classroom full of inflatable dinosaurs for the Dinosaurs topic...
http://www.lazyboneuk.com

Creative Spaces 13

These are great...

Reading Hideaway from www.bookspaceforschools.co.uk

They put me in mind of the Think Pods at Media City, BBC, Salford